The invention relates generally to the field of portable data collection terminals, and more particularly to portable, hand-held data terminals of various commercial and industrial data information systems. Hand-held data collection terminals are compact, portable sensory elements of often complex data management systems of state of the art businesses.
Data collection terminals being front line elements of such data management systems, the need for the terminals to be rugged and capable of performing with reliability under various and often adverse conditions is imperative. Portability is desirably improved by providing for ready access to battery compartments. While batteries are typically rechargeable, secondary cells, under certain uses of the portable data collection terminals a downtime for recharging included battery packs is not available, and battery packs need to be exchanged and recharged externally to extend the service cycle of a certain data collection terminal. In past improvements of such data collection terminals, the interior of the terminals were sealed against external contaminants, such as water or dust, while battery packs were slidably located in semi-protected battery compartments. In some existing embodiments, part of the battery casing itself constitutes part of the protective closure of such battery compartments. In other existing embodiments, hinged end cap closures have been employed to enclose the battery within the general housing structure of the hand-held data collection terminals.
It is realized that improvements rendering the state of the art data collection terminals more rugged further increase the number of applications in which the data collection terminals can be used, and hence increase the usefulness of the terminals.